Virtual War Drome 2: City of the Dead

[KagiyaLawCorp]

"While that would be fun, Sr. Duck," Chap replied, "it seems that we were brought to this infected land to duel until one can no longer do so. I am saddened, as you seem to be an amiable sort of bird, but it is my duty. As such, I will strive to simply render you unconscious, rather than taking your life." He drew his sword, placed a plastic safety guard over the blade itself, and charged grimly towards his opponent.

[Qara-Xuan Zenith]

"Oh. Well, that's awkward. But, thing is, much as I appreciate your good intentions, the last time I got knocked unconscious, it ended up causing a lot of trouble. Though at least I got this frisbee out of it, so there's that, I guess. But I'd rather knock you out first or something, if it's all the same to you."

The Duck takes his frisbee grimly in his mouth, and flies a few feet up in the air. Dropping back to ground level when he approaches the grasshopper, he begins blindly thwacking at grasshopper and air alike with his frisbee.

[KagiyaLawCorp]

The two creatures clashed time and time again, frisbee against epée, both with darkened expressions as they strove to deal non-lethal blows. Suddenly, Chap ducked, hiding in the grass. He leapt to higher ground, where he fired several stingers from Aguijón, and waited patiently.

[Qara-Xuan Zenith]

Man, this guy's good. Getting a little scary...

The Duck expertly flipped his frisbee up from his bill, landing it on his head, where it protected him from the arrows raining down.

Flying slowly, so as not to dislodge his defense, the Duck attempted to rise, to occupy a better strategic position. Of course, what I'd *do* with it, I have no clue...

As if in response to the Duck's panic, five zombies detached from the crowds in the distant streets, and approached the makeshift battleground. One of the zombies began singing a twelve-hundred-verse epic poem to the tune of "I know a song that gets on everybody's nerves" in a low voice, while a second began an interpretive dance. Of the remaining three zombies, two began what sounded, from their tones of voice, to be a cross-talk act of the "Who's on First" variety, except they were each speaking in different languages; one's sounded like it was composed mainly of squawks, while the other's most closely resembled Klingon. The last zombie just grinned madly while running and jumping around the clearing, occasionally climbing on top of his four companions, before jumping back down to the ground and continuing to race around.

"That's weird. Those zombies sure are acting strange." The Duck shrugged; the onslaught seemed to have ended, so he bounced in place, flipping his frisbee off his head and swooping over to catch it again in his bill, and he continued to fly upwards, until he had taken up a position almost directly ten feet above the grasshopper, and began to flap his wings to remain in place, judging his opportunity.

[KagiyaLawCorp]

Chap stared as a quintet of the undead legion shuffled towards his direction. It appears that this field is not as secluded as I had previously thought. As the reanimated corpses began to behave erratically, Chap looked up to see The Duck flying overhead. He leapt up, unleashed several more salvos of stingers, then paused to listen a comedy routine put on by two of the zombies. He chuckled as it came to an end, then climbed into a hole in a nearby tree before they returned to their senses.

[Qara-Xuan Zenith]

An arrow pierces the edge of the frisbee. "Well, that's just great. This thing will never fly true now. So much for winning that Ultimate Frisbee Championship next week," the Duck grumbles.

He alights on a branch of the tree which the grasshopper has just entered. Well, if he's inside the tree, I can't get at him. That's no good... The Duck taps the broken frisbee against his bill, and the trunk of the tree, in deep thought.

At last appearing to come to a decision, the Duck hops to a higher branch, then again to a higher one. At last he stops, having found exactly what he was looking for. The tree was, as he had suspected, thoroughly hollow-- and here was the other opening. Tucking the frisbee under a wing, the Duck inhales deeply, storing as much air as he can in his diaphragm (do ducks have diaphragms. Yes they do. Of course they do), the Duck leans in close to the hole in the tree, covering it completely with his bill before letting out all that air in one loud, echoing, "QUACK!"

Was that... too loud? Or JUST LOUD ENOUGH?

[KagiyaLawCorp]

Utterly shaken by the waterfowl's sonic attack, Chap stumbled about within the tree until he regained his senses. As he peered out of the small gap he had used as an entryway, he noticed that one of his stingers had pierced the Duck's throwing disc. That would certainly explain why he seems so agitated, Chap thought. It seems I ought to end this quickly. He pulled out another stinger, this one marked with a green stripe to distinguish it from the others. Sleeping toxins. He loaded the stinger into Aguijón, and hopped out into the grass, preparing to fire his finishing blow.

[Qara-Xuan Zenith]

Wait, is that... motion? Looks like he ended up out of that tree, after all!

With no time to lose, and realizing that the Ultimate Frisbee Championship was a lost cause at this point anyway, the Duck shot forward out of the tree, homing in on the grasshopper, beating at it with the frisbee in earnest. "Don't bugs get crushed by stuff? Like, eventually, they just get crushed, right? Right?"

[KagiyaLawCorp]

Beaten within an inch of his life, Chap barely managed to stay awake. He struggled to stand, a viscous fluid seeping from his cracked exoskeleton. As the Duck flew off, believing Chap to have passed away, the trigger was pulled, sending the final stinger hurtling towards the cheery bird. Chap collapsed, finally letting unconsciousness pull him into a deep rest.

[Qara-Xuan Zenith]

The Duck beat at the grasshopper persistently. "You'll get crushed! Eventually? Right? Right? Right?"

Finally, the Duck felt the grasshopper collapse beneath his frisbee's onslaught. Practically collapsing with relief, the Duck took flight again. He had finally let down his guard when an arrow grazed the side of his head, and he succumbed to unconsciousness, gliding unawares gently to the ground as the air passed over his still-outstretched wings.

[[yup, I think we just mutually annihilated. Or mutually KO'd, anyway. That's what we were going for, right? RIGHT? ]]

[Lordxana0]

Analyzing fight.

Double Knockout.

Both Characters are dead.

No winner.

[Genndy Oda C.O.G.]

Nada rushed through the city, trying to get to a better view of the place. Zombies. How trite. I wonder who's controlling these ones? He continued to run towards a tall building in the distance, unaware of the bones that were slowly replacing the normal ground.

[agoraoptera]

Agora took a deep breath, gaining a feel for the battleground. The teleport-in had been disorienting, even for the gaunt undead and-
Undead? Agora smiled grimly at the sight of the milling zombies far below, wandering about with no goal in mind. His gaze flitted from side to side as he turned round and round, observing the decrepit, half-fallen skyscrapers and the broken streets.
"A dead city filled with dead people," He announced raspily to the hazy wind, even as spores puffed out from his pallid skin. "A perfect vector for absolute infection."
-and he had climbed his way up one of the towers in an attempt to gain a vantage point. Already, his bones were spreading and the flesh had already sloughed off his right arm like so much rotten mush, leaving behind a dirty white skeletal frame. The maggots were venturing out, devouring their way through the ground, eating, reproducing, spreading.
Agora stamped the ground lightly with one foot, further spreading the spiky bone growths. Further spreading his tenuous existence.
It would not be long before this skyscraper completely turned into a magnificent edifice of bone. The climb had spread little seeds of ossification all over it after all, accelerating the process by several degrees of magnitude. Even as the wind blew, spreading thinly his contagion into the streets below, he noticed a small figure running towards his dirty-white-upon-dark-black tower, seemingly ignoring the zombies and the few spots of bone growth he had left on the street level.

[Genndy Oda C.O.G.]

Upon reaching the immense tower, Nada finally realized something was off. There were patches of bone found around the city, and the tower seemed to be made of bone at the top. Bone, hmm? I guess that that's my opponent. He took out Gatta, set it barrel-down on the ground, and fired blasts of air until he reached the top of the skyscraper.

[agoraoptera]

A man rose up, one arm wielding a strange gun, both hands garbed in shining, silvery gloves. Puffs of air emerged from the gun, evidently propelling him upwards. This then, was his opponent.
"You," Agora called out. "Bright-Eyes. We are to fight, are we not? I see your body shines from within like a beacon of light in the darkness, a candle. Do you feel that, the rushing wind of these great heights upon your cheeks? The winds shall spread the sweet embrace of death and extinguish your light."
Even as he spoke, Agora grabbed at his own cataract-blinded eyes, gouging them out without any visible effect on his well-being.
"See, Bright-Eyes, see through my eyes and know the inevitability of the end!" With a raspy cry, he crushed the murky orbs and cast it at his foe, observing through eyeless sockets. Filthy jelly carrying the blackest contagions his taken body could hold without immediately falling apart splashed out in a vitreous spray at the man, hovering and glowing oh so subtly. Ah, so many plagues, so many ways and means of death and even as the microbes spread through the air, little pustules of miniscule cell-reapers, still the bones spread and grew.
Time was on his side. Time, and death.

[Genndy Oda C.O.G.]

Nada leapt to the side, just fast enough to dodge the infested upchuck of his undead enemy. "How fitting," Nada said. "A lich in a world of the dead." He pointed at the ground and shouted "HF!" The bones began to dissolve, leaving the two combatants to fight on the decrepit skyscraper.

[agoraoptera]

"A lich? My friend- ah, foe- a mere lich would not be able to do what I do." Agora scoffed, feeling a measure of his left cheek droop and fall away onto the ground. The man had done something to the bone growths, causing it to run thick and goopy, in some places dissolving it away entirely to dust. Agora chuckled. Bone dust, liquid bone, it did not matter, bone was still bone. Besides, the other seeded growths along the sides of the building were still developing and spreading. By now, the bottom half of the skyscraper or more was probably entirely bone on the outside. Broken glass, cut wires, steel superstructures, all was fodder for the calcification.

The man stood there, waiting, maybe, for Agora to make the first move. That brought another thin smile to his rotten face as he considered his choices. The glowing fool clearly had some ranged capabilities, but how far did they extend? It did not matter. Agora was certain he would be able to dodge any projectiles and, if necessary, take the blows directly. He glanced over the edge of the building, watching the walking dead. Calmly, he began to walk along the edge, keeping the strangely glowing man in his peripheral vision.

Spread, spread and grow! The rooftop was not as big as it should have been, being half-collapsed inwards and at such a distance, it would be a matter of minutes, maybe five, maybe ten before the man succumbed. Already, though he had dodged the eyes, no doubt he would have inhaled some particulate. A definite vector of infection..

That strange cry though, and the effect it had had on the bone, crumbling and dissolving it.. What could this man do?

[Genndy Oda C.O.G.]

Suddenly, Nada felt a pain in his lungs, as if it was being eaten away. I'd better end this fast, he thought, before turning towards his osteal adversary. "NaOH! HF! O!" A massive explosion erupted beneath the decaying corpse, which gave Nada enough time to launch numerous spheres of flame from Gatta towards him. A corpse aflame is turned to ash, he thought hopefully, and an enemy cremated is a duel won.

[agoraoptera]

Fire, fear, death! The flames rushed at him rapidly and even as he was thrown upwards from an apropos eruption under him, Agora fancied that he could perhaps dodge the flickering fiery orb, maybe twist and turn in mid-air. Ah, but what was the use? The spheres tore into his body, burning away the already tenuous cohesion of his flesh, bringing his body heat, heat such as he had never experienced. But what was pain if he could not feel, what did it matter to his flesh if all along he intended to slough and shed it away like a molting insect? His tattered clothing and flesh twisted and incinerated, but Agora was yet extant.
Within seconds, all that was left of Agora were soot-stained and ash-covered bones. He rose up, fully a skeleton, uncaring about the damage his flesh had suffered.

"Fire?" Agora somehow contrived to speak without vocal cords. "How trite." Waving an arm about, he indicated the ash flowing away from his body, propelled by the wind. "Flesh burns, of course. Bone does not."

Allowing the continuous barrage of fireballs to crash into his deceptively thin skeletal frame, Agora began to sprint forward, closing the gap between them quickly. Though the impact of the fireballs gouged small holes into him, the holes instantly refilled themselves, his unnatural regeneration fueled by the now-omnipresent bone covering the rooftop.

Just a few more steps.. Agora thought, barely four metres away from his foe.

[Genndy Oda C.O.G.]

As the skeletal being moved closer and closer, Nada pointed at him and shouted "Once more, with feeling! HF!" Again the bone began to dissolve, and Nada hoped that the fight was done, as the decay was still spreading through him.

[agoraoptera]

A strange sensation this, a continual melting and reconstruction of my body..
The dissolving of his bone had a strange, unexpected effect though. As the bone dissolved and ran downwards, only to be instantly replaced, the overall effect was that his bones became thicker, harder, stronger than ever. Then he stepped forward and slipped, unbalanced by the abrupt change in his mass. Momentum threw him forward though, and in a split-second, the ever-present screaming of souls enveloped the man and a sudden flinching and paling of his visage informed Agora that he was close enough.

Tumbling forward, Agora was so very vulnerable, but no doubt the simultaneously psychic and sonic assault on the man's senses stunned him. At the least, his eardrums had burst already, thick crimson oozing out like so much red sludge, dripping down. Slack-jawed, empty-eyed, those were the usual symptoms apart from the sheer terror experienced by his victims. But that hardly mattered now, did paralysis really matter when such close proximity with him would no doubt soon fill his opponent's skin and flesh with pathogens, turning him into a grotesque breeding ground, bleeding and tearing him from within? Perhaps it did matter, Agora mused, even as he tumbled forward, crashing into the man, knocking them both off the top of the skyscraper.

Yes, perhaps paralysis mattered now. The rushing wind whistled through his empty ribcage, playing a distorted, whimsical yet oddly appropriate tune. Agora welcomed the fall, even as he reached out for his foe and attempted to hold him in a deathly embrace. The fall would shatter his bones and kill the man, but Agora would still exist.

[Genndy Oda C.O.G.]

As the ground raced up to meet Nada, he pulled out Gatta and fired, his terror temporarily overcome by adrenaline and will to live. Four spiraling streams of water pushed Nada up and over to a different building out of the mental attack's range. From there he pointed at the seemingly invincible skeleton and shouted "Pzl!" Let's see how your bones like highly concentrated radiation.

[agoraoptera]

Bony hands missing him by an inch, Agora could only watch as the diminishing figure of his foe flew upwards and away. Agora might have frowned, but he could not change the macabre grin upon his skull. Quicker, he ought to have been, and he resolved not to-

The ground smashed into him, or so it seemed to Agora, like a sledgehammer wielded by an enormous giant blessed by unspeakable gods. Ribcage collapsing inwards, splintering bone fragments sent flying, but Agora chuckled through a cracked skull for he still existed. He began to pick himself off the ground, faltering even as his arms fell apart in a spray of fine grit and dust. It was not a problem, not for him.

Seconds passed, maybe half a minute, probably lesser and then Agora rose again, his new skeletal frame impeccable. Out of habit, he dusted at himself, then paused as the zombies began crowding around him like scavenging vultures. The closest few, reaching out for him, began collapsing and clawing at the ground even as putrid pustules began covering their skin.

A full-throated chuckle grew from him and Agora called out to the air, even as each of the zombies in turn began to be filled with his plagues.

"Buboes, phlegm, blood and guts,
Boils, bogies, rot and pus,
Blisters, fevers, weeping sores,
From your wounds, Bright-Eyes, the fester pours!"
Agora shouted his challenge to the man, far up above him. Such close proximity would no doubt have transmitted his most virulent, most deadly of contagions. The strange gunman would have a fire lit in his veins, a poison in his soul and there was nothing he could do about it.

He glanced up to see a bright light flashing towards him, its spectral flaring quite unlike the prior orbs of flame. Quite a sight to behold, Agora thought appreciatively, uncaring of the effect it would have on him. Then it shone across him, seemingly without effect, passing through Agora like the wisp of a phantom, the ghost of a whisper. The plague-bringer glanced down at his arms and flexed his fingers tentatively. It felt.. weaker, somehow. Ah, but what did it matter? His strength was not in his arms, he would not throttle the fool.

At least, Agora amended, Not at such a distance.

[Genndy Oda C.O.G.]

What‽ It didn't do anything! I must be too far off. Nada looked over the edge of the building, but a sudden burst of pain caused him to fall off. He used Gatta for propulsion yet again, but at a lower rate. As he slowly descended, he shouted "Pu! U! Pr! Pzl! Decay, you accursed monstrosity, decay!" He continued to blast radiation at his opponent, cycling through the elements he could still remember. However, as each burst of radiation hit the skeletal beast, Nada decayed as well, the diseases ripping him apart inside.

[agoraoptera]

".. accursed monstrosity, decay!"

Was that a challenge in response to his own that Agora heard? Decay? Those bright flashing lights zipping their way to him, crashing into him like before, each further weakening his bone structure. Agora would have narrowed his eyes, had he any left, or a face, for that matter. Instead, the skeleton settled for grabbing at his own spine and tearing himself apart.

These energies weaken my body, weaken me to be little stronger than the brittle earth, He spat mentally, But why settle for a weakened form, when I can recreate myself anew?

Tearing off the vertebrae, the ribs, any part he could grab at, Agora tossed up the sharp bones at the incoming lights. True, they continued to weaken him, but then with the constant regeneration, the plague-bringer could well afford to keep losing his bones. It would be hilarious, he thought as he threw up his entire right leg, by now lying back on the ground leisurely, If he were to be hit mid-flight by my foot.

With the light growing stronger and stronger, a clear sign that his opponent was approaching ever closer, Agora abruptly rolled away to the side and began sprinting forward with his entirely reformed body. The tapping of his bony feet on ossified ground echoed through the calcified streets, a rapid tattoo offset by the groans of several zombies. Most, if not all, of the street was bone now and there were a few protruding sculptures of pure white material, evidently zombies who had been utterly subsumed by the all-consuming ossein.

Surely the man would fall soon. Ravaged lungs, broken liver, failing eyesight. Fevered mind and agonied flesh, these were merely the tip of the diseased iceberg that Agora's presence brought. And now, if he could only get close once more, the diseases would surely amplify. Death, as ever, crept forward without regard to any other. Death, as ever, was unstoppable.